


A Lullaby In Five Parts

by Fire_Sign



Series: Piece by Piece [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 16:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3943435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/pseuds/Fire_Sign
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filling in the blanks between Avengers and Age of Ultron, and how a lullaby was born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lullaby In Five Parts

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this prompt on the kink meme:
>
>> Bruce/Natasha - anything to do with 'The Lullaby'  
> Possible ideas to explore: Who came up with it? How were the words/gestures chosen? Has it ever failed? Why, after her not-so-great experience with the Hulk in Avengers 1, was Natasha chosen to deliver it?  
> But feel free to go your own way, I'd just love to see something about this. :)
> 
>  
> 
> I'm still not completely satisfied with the result, but I'm not going to have time to work on it for a couple of weeks and I'd rather post than not. Also, I think I've finally got the formatting readable but let me know if you notice any errors.

#### .:TOUCH:.

Natasha walked into Stark's lab.

"Miss Romanov, sir," announced JARVIS.

"Natasha!" Stark exclaimed with his usual aplomb from somewhere near the back of the room.

"Don't Natasha me," she said curtly. "Pepper sent me. You're already an hour late."

She rounded the corner and found a dishevelled Tony standing next to Bruce Banner, who was topless and hooked up to several machines. Banner gave her a half-wave with a chagrined smile.

"I don't even want to know," said Natasha, shaking her head.

"We're testing the effects of various sedatives on Banner's heart rate," said Tony. "Find a way to make the Other Guy go night-night."

Natasha gave a non-committal nod, then looked at the folders on the desk in front of her. She spotted a file labelled VERONICA and opened it. A quick glance told her enough, and she shut it again.

"Have you ever tried just talking to him?"

"Giant green rage monster," Tony reminded her. "Not a big talker."

She had read Bruce's file at SHIELD, and there was enough about the events in Harlem to cast doubts on the assertion that the Hulk was completely unreachable. She also knew it wasn't her place to share that information. She wondered, briefly, whether Bruce didn't know or didn't want to share. 

"Okay, touch then."

"That doesn't sound dangerous at all," commented Bruce dryly.

She gave him a sharp look. "Look, you touch a person the right way and it relaxes them. The more you relax the lower your heart rate goes, right?"

"I don't think being touched by you is likely to _decrease_ a man's heart rate," quipped Tony. Natasha ignored him.

"Give me your hand," she ordered, moving over to Banner.

He complied, and she began to stroke the inside of his arm and smiled at him. It wasn't that different from what she did undercover, even if it was a little more blatant.

"See, no big deal," she said.

"It's working," observed Tony, staring at the monitors.

"It's better than beating the shit out of a team mate, at least," said Natasha, remembering the schematics she had seen.

"You're missing the big issue here, Agent Romanov," said Bruce. "How exactly do you propose anybody gets close enough to the Other Guy to implement this plan?"

"Forget that!" said Tony, clearly seeing potential in this new avenue. "Natasha, I need you to stay here and touch Bruce for a few hours. For data."

Bruce started spluttering and pulled his arm away.

"You can't ask her to... Tony! Even if this was a viable solution- WHICH IT IS NOT- you can't just draft random people into your experiments. Did you set up your own R&D so you could ignore the existence of ethics committees?"

Tony waved his concerns away.

"It's fine. Natasha doesn't mind, do you?"

"Not tonight. Pepper is still waiting," she reminded him. "And I like Pepper more than I like you, so don't try those pathetic eyes on me,"

"I'm hurt! This could be the biggest scientific breakthrough since... well, since last week, but with my genius that's still impressive!"

"It's not exactly a breakthrough or scientific, more a rehashing of well known facts," Natasha pointed out, thankful that her tenure as Tony's PA was short and very much over. "Go see your girlfriend. Just... go. We'll discuss feeling Doctor Banner up another time."

The good doctor managed to blush, and Natasha chuckled as she walked out of the room.

#### .:MIMIC:.

"Look, are you sure you're okay with this?" asked Bruce. "You can walk away. Anytime."

Natasha rolled her eyes.

"I appreciate your concern. Really. But this was my idea. There are about fifty safety precautions in place. We've run every test half a dozen times. This is my _job_."

Banner nodded, and she realised that she was so preoccupied by the idea of confronting the Hulk again to notice he was more scared than she was. If things went well she would be gaining control; no matter the outcome, he was giving it up.

"It will be fine," she told him quietly. "And if not, I'll get out of there. No pushing my luck, okay?"

He looked at her skeptically, and she grinned to set him at ease.

"Scout's honour."

He stepped into the containment room, and Natasha followed. The Big Guy came out, and Natasha let him smash around for a few minutes before trying to get his attention.

"Hey Big Guy!" she called, loudly enough for him to hear her. When he turned, she smiled. "Hey, I really need Banner to come back now. I don't suppose you want to help a girl out?"

The Hulk roared so loudly she felt it rattle in her chest.

Natasha ran.

When Bruce had transformed back, he came out of the room still buttoning his shirt. He didn't meet Natasha's eyes, and silenced Tony with a look.

\---

When she came to the testing site the next day, he was surprised.

"I'm sorry about yesterday-" she started, determined to smooth things over.

"Don't apologise," he interrupted. "If we're going to try this again, I need to know that you'll make the same call."

It was a concession for him. Not trust, but maybe something like it.

"Okay."

It took her a week of trying and fleeing before she made any progress. On the eighth day she caught the Big Guy's attention, than raised her hand to keep it on her. To her surprise, he raised his hand as well.

"Good job," she coaxed.

The moment was broken when she moved too quickly, but it was a start. They tried again. And again. And again, until Fury called her with an assignment. Natasha didn't believe in leaving a job unfinished.

"No fleeing the continent while I'm gone," she told him.

#### .:TRUST:.

Natasha was gone for nearly three months. She was back in the tower for less than an hour before she headed to Banner's lab. He was engrossed in some data, but looked up and smiled at her when she cleared her throat.

"Have a nice time?" he asked, nodding to her broken arm.

"You should see the other guy."

He chuckled, then stopped himself.

"Tony's not here, so we're not testing any way."

"Any progress while I was gone?" she asked, hopping onto the lab bench.

"Steve tried. The Other Guy threw him into a wall," Banner said bluntly.

Natasha winced.

"Should we go over the video?" she offered.

He took her to the office at the back of his lab, hastily clearing the couch of pillow and blanket before offering her a seat. JARVIS loaded the footage from the containment room and began to play it once they were settled. She heard Banner hiss when he transformed on screen, then take calming breaths.

"You okay?" she asked. "We don't have to watch this."

"We do if we want to find out where he went wrong. I do have some self-control, by the way."

"I know," she said, nodding. "I just wanted to- oh, what is he doing?"

Bruce studied the screen.

"The same thing you do; talk to distract, then move in."

"Yes, but he's lying."

"What?" asked Banner.

"Well, not lying lying. More like...." Natasha hesitated before expanding. If it helped, it was important. "He's saying what he thinks you- well, other you- wants to hear, rather than being honest. He doesn't really believe it."

"Are you telling me that _sincerity_ is what works on Green and Ugly?"

"Pretty much."

"And Captain America, boy scout that he is, can't manage it, but the professional liar can?"

"I don't lie, not to you," Natasha admitted, then noticed his arched eyebrow. "It's not from any sense of nobility, if that makes it easier to swallow. Every time I've tried things have gone wrong, Telling the truth is what works, so I do."

"I suppose that makes a weird sort of sense."

He was too honest at times; he rarely opened up, but with his dark eyes watching her intently Natasha had to fight the urge to run before the warmth burnt her. The distance she so carefully cultivated in all her relationships through lies and half truths was gone, and who she really was laid too close to the surface for comfort.

"It's something different, at least," said Natasha, breaking the moment before things went too far. "Do you have other videos?"

\---

When she had down time between assignments, she often came to the tower to work on what Stark called the lullaby. Natasha and Bruce had exchanged a look, but the name had stuck. Progress was slow, but eventually she could change him back under three minutes. Surprisingly, she found that the more time she spent with him the more she _liked_ Banner. His quiet reserve was refreshing in a team of strong personalities, and he never asked her for anything more than what she freely gave. He was dry and sarcastic, and the little half-smile he gave when she laughed at his bad jokes was oddly appealing.

She wasn't blind to his faults; in an attempt to avoid conflict he gave in to Tony too often, and his conviction that he would one day be the Noble Sacrifice was tedious. His taste in movies was questionable, a fact she discovered when movie night became A Thing after particularly gruelling days;

"Sometimes you feel like Bogart and sometimes you feel like Belushi," he had said, shrugging. "You choose next time."

She didn't. It was too much like revealing herself. He didn't press the offer.

In the end, it was the way he channelled the fury beneath the surface to do good that won her over. Whenever she came to the lab he was working on something new that went some way to clearing his ledger of red; a cheap, self-sustaining water purifier, a more effective antimalarial, whatever need he thought he could meet. Two minutes of investigating his financials showed that a large chunk of the generous salary Tony insisted on went towards community projects. It was a different sort of balance.

18 months after the Battle of Manhattan, she came back to the tower and made the now familiar trek down to Banner's lab. JARVIS had stopped announcing her presence after she had threatened Tony, and it gave her a chance to watch Bruce's head bobbing up and down as he worked. In a moment of clarity, she realised that Bruce Banner was a friend.

"I'm back."

She told herself that this was not home. Home was a weakness that she couldn't afford and had long ago stopped needing. But he nodded to her before looking back to the microscope and she began to doubt.

#### .:SPEAK:.

After SHIELD fell and her testimony was done, Natasha returned to Avengers Tower. She didn't have much of a choice, really; the media would have a field day if she disappeared entirely, but at least the tower was familiar and secure and New York big enough to disappear in. She took to walking for hours, usually ending up in a quiet corner of Central Park.

Bruce found her there one day. He brought a coffee and a small bag with creams and sugar.

"I couldn't remember how you took it," he explained apologetically.

"Just black, but thank you."

He stood awkwardly for a moment, and she shifted down the bench and nodded to the empty space beside her. He sat, and they watched the other people in silence.

Hours passed. Nothing needed to be said. Her entire world had been turned upside down. Steve would (and had) reassured her that it was the right thing to do. Tony would try to recruit her. Clint had asked her to visit, but she didn't want to risk exposing Laura and the kids. Bruce just sat there, all too familiar with how it felt to lose your life's work.

"Sun's getting low," he finally remarked.

"Mmm," she agreed. And then, because she hated unfinished business more than she hated sentimentality, added, "Thank you."

#### .:SING:.

"We need the big guy."

Bruce shook his head. "Absolutely not. We've never used the lullaby in the field and there are civilians a mile away."

Natasha listened from the front of the jet to the quiet voices arguing. Steve kept pushing, and even though Banner's voice remained steady she could tell he was frustrated. She shot Clint a look to let him know she was going back, rolling her eyes for good measure.

"Banner doesn't go out unless he wants to, Steve," she said firmly.

She liked Steve, and she'd follow Captain America just about anywhere. But his particular blind spot when it came to Bruce and commands was not his finest quality. She gave him a deliberate look, then jerked her head towards the back of the plane. He took the hint.

"You here to be the carrot to his stick?" asked Banner bitterly.

"You know I'm not," she said, sitting beside him. "It would ruin all our work, for starters. I'm going to say my piece, then I'm going back to fly this plane. You know Steve wouldn't ask-"

"I wouldn't exactly call that asking."

"Fine, Steve wouldn't order the Other Guy out unless it was the best choice. You can't avoid this forever. Veronica is fully functional, and you know Tony would love to take her for a spin. And I've got this. I won't be more than ten feet and I'll call you back if you so much as look in the direction of town. This is as good as it's ever going to get, Bruce, and the rest is up to you. Think about it."

She didn't look back. When they landed an hour later, the Hulk joined them.

\--- 

The fight didn't last long, but getting Bruce back proved more difficult than anticipated.They had tested him hundreds of times, but the distractions of the outside world were stronger than they had accounted for. Every time Natasha caught his attention a noise would grab it back.

"Keep it down to a dull roar," she hissed into her comms. "Otherwise we're going to have a big green problem."

She turned her attention back to the Hulk in front of her.

"Hey Big Guy, over here. That's good... no, on me. Come on. We've got this, right? Smashing time is just about over."

He turned away again, and she tried to recall anything that would keep her from calling in Veronica.

"Sun's getting real low," she said, remembering an evening in Central Park months earlier. "Time to go home."

He stopped. For a moment the Hulk's face was so clearly Banner that it surprised her. The line between the man and the monster was so thin, yet almost insurmountable. He came closer, and she reached out. His arm was hot and she could feel his pulse thudding away. She stroked it, slowly and gently, and felt his heartbeat slow. She smiled at him.

"There we are."

He stumbled away to transform, and Natasha averted her eyes. Bruce hated people seeing him like that. When he reemerged from around the corner, she handed him a clean shirt.

"Thank you," he said, taking it.

\---

That night, she knocked on the door to his lab. She knew he would be exhausted but unable to sleep, and would be taking it out on his latest project. Waiting for him to answer the door was terrifying- she wasn't sure he would answer, and knocking seemed so formal. After a minute he opened it, blinking blearily. It occurred to her that he had been asleep in the office and she nearly walked away.

"Hey Natasha," he said. "What can I do for you?"

She held up the DVD in her hand.

"Movie?"

He stepped aside and motioned her in.

\---

If both of them were asleep before Danny Zuko was left at a drive-in, the only witness was JARVIS and he knew better than to talk.


End file.
